Day 10 – Raleigh to Orangeburg
September 10th, 2009Thursday marked the apogee of our road trip — the far-point of our drive after which all the rest can be correctly classified as “coming back.” We originally based our road trip around plans to go on a vacation with my family in South Carolina, and so, after ten days, we finally made it into the state and along some familiar (and not-so-familiar) roads to my childhood stomping grounds. I actually grew up in Columbia, but both of my parents and their parents are from Orangeburg, and that’s where they live now.
One of the best things about driving south from Raleigh into South Carolina is that you get to go by South of the Border. SotB is a fantastic little theme park/truck stop/fireworks megaplex/tourist trap with billboards advertising the giant sombrero posted on I-95 as far north as Maine, I think. Here’s the sombrero tower:
Unfortunately, we did not have a chance to go up in it. Instead, I found a tall human and had her “imitiate” the tower instead:
We found some trinkets and fun junk, we wandered into a series of restaurants that all looked like they were doing even worse with the economy than they were doing the last time I ventured in them, over a decade ago. We found a giant gorilla (use Zamba for scale, if you will):
We found a $699 fireworks package that would have necessitated leaving most of our travel gear on the sidewalk, had we decided to purchase it and take it with us:
And, I found some fun abstracts:
It was only a matter of hours from there before we wearily wandered into Casa Brantley in Orangeburg and happily collapsed into our parents’ arms. Okay, we didn’t do that, except for Zamba. We’re here for a few days before we start our vacation at the beach, and it’ll be busy with family visits and a special birthday party.